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Consider at one extreme, public decapitation. However, only 'barbaric' cultures do this. So, the quest in the USA in particular was for a more 'humane' method, one that, incidentally, does not traumatise the executioner or the witnesses too much. (And that's a thing to consider. You probably don't want the sort of person who really, really enjoys their job to be an executioner in the first place [the normal solution to this is to appoint a condemned prisoner, but that has other problems]); and you probably don't want to send your humane executioner insane simply from doing their job either).

And so, the quest for 'humane' methods that don't traumatise anyone, which historically got side-tracked by the shiny of technology (poison gas, electricity).

Lethal injection goes to extreme lengths to pretend that all is sweetness and unicorns: victim is put gently to sleep, then paralyzed (so on-lookers don't freak out---of course if prisoner is not unconscious, this is the stuff of nightmares), then heart is stopped (apparently agonising if not unconscious). So. Many. Ways. To. Go. Wrong.

And it's all down to the pretence that the state can kill someone 'humanely'. Without upsetting anyone, not even the condemned.

I was surprised to find how clean Obj-C was. Eventually, I figured out that it's because of two things:

[1] The weird at first [receiver message] syntax makes it explicit that it is a message passing object model. I find that a natural and helpful model, rather than the procedural-like syntax of C++ and Java. The syntax helps me think in objects, with a clean visual and mental distinction between the Obj bits and the procedural bits.

[2] NextStep is a thing of beauty.

Against that, modern C++ has more modern and advanced syntax (lambda, templates). I'm not sure they make up for it. But rather than C++ I'd go for some other modern language (insert large list here).

Given that the guillotine was last used in France in 1977, and last used there publicly in 1939, it's not a sound that should be at all familiar, yet I suspect most of you can bring the sound to mind—courtesy of innumerable historical dramas and the dedicated efforts of Foley artists.

Backblaze tested the slower and cheaper STBD6000100, not the ST6000NM0024.

For their tests they note that the WD Red uses slightly less energy (which is important to them, when they have racks full of the drives) and also because it can lay down 1TB a day MORE than the Seagate. Again, a slightly different workload than most of us.

For them, the extra cost and power of the higher spec Seagate aren't worth it.

In summary: essentially equal performance (go to SSD if you need speed); essentially equal cost; slight edge on power to WD;

For reliability, no failures or pre-failures in 3 months of 24/7 operation.

I have an old mechanical watch. It requires winding once every two days, so I wind it every day. No big deal. BUT, it takes a few (10, 15) seconds to wind the watch. Can I charge the Apple Watch in under a minute? While wearing it?

Winding a mechanical watch and charging a cellphone/smartwatch are not quite as comparable as other posters have been making out.

Of course, one might cynically note many other actions that appear to be against the law, yet go unprosecuted; or indeed laws that conflict with international obligations as established by treaty, or laws that conflict with the constitution.

It may also be to a company's financial advantage to guard their customers' data in this way, and I don't mean that it will get them more customers.

The cost of complying with requests for this sort of data is not zero, and may in fact be considerable. The Agencies may do it at their own cost, but you can bet they really want the cost out of their own budgets and into someone else's.

If a company really has no way to deliver the information, impossibilium nulla obligatio (no legal obligation to do the impossible), they have no compliance costs.